What public transit teaches us about life

by Kitty Felde

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I'm here in New Jersey, taking the bus into Manhattan for a friend's play. And a teenage driver in a silver Nissan backed into us. Luckily, he was moving slowly, so no one on the bus was hurt. The bus got scratched. But his bumper was another story.

The kid felt awful. You could see it all over his face. And then the police showed up, followed closely by a guy who looked like Gene Hackman who had to be his father. Dad started to yell. Or at least it looked that way. We might be late to our show in New York, but there was drama unfolding right in front of us. We pressed our noses to the bus window to watch. The teenagers in the row ahead of me started supplying the dialogue: "I could never be the man you wanted me to be!"

Two of the officers, with accents straight out of "The Sopranos" got onboard and walked the aisle, taking names, addresses, even ages(!) for a witness list.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking.

And there's nothing you can do about it.

We imagine, as we zoom around town in our cars, that we are masters of the universe. In control of our own fates. Hah!

Public transit is a reminder of all the things in life that we don't have control over. A reminder to just take a breath, put expectations aside, and enjoy the drama right in front of us.